Anachronist

Yeah I think that people get all mixed up trying to compare mathematical conditions to "real" conditions where there is some variation and turbulence. Anytime someone says "this weird thing happened" someone else says "thats not possible based on these very specific conditions that you may or may not have been in." But yes, it is important to understand the fundamental principals first, then learn they can be "bent" based on changes in the variables. For instance, I noticed a long time ago that flying straight and level (say 20 degrees off of upwind), my canopy will gradually turn to fly directly into the wind with no control input, it wouldn't/couldn't happen if the air column was stable and laminar. I was confused, and some people I told thought I was retarded, until it happened following a strong gust, and the turn was pronounced. I had an "ah ha" moment. Basically, if the wind speed changes, you don't instantly change with it, so there is more drag/lift/whatever (I'm not trying to get really technical with an anhedral wing and a enormously low center of gravity) on the upwind half of the wing, letting the downwind half catch up a little. Had another interesting chat and unresolved question. "If you fly perpendicular to the wind with smoke, will the trail be straight?" My guess is of course in a perfectly smooth column of air, yes, but those don't really exist. So "in real life" as the wind changes, the smoke will move as the wind does (very little mass), the jumper's movement will be delayed (time for their mass to equalize with the change in wind speed) so the smoke will be the sum of the changes in wind speed, and the jumper will be (roughly) the mean of the change in wind speed; thus the line of smoke will not be straight. So to really simplify it, assume 10kt cross that accelerates and stays at 20kts, the smoke will accelerate essentially with the wind, while it will take the jumper at least a few seconds to absorb enough energy to move with the column again.

Thanks for clarifying my own experiences for me, I really appreciate it, don't know what I'd do without someone on the internet explaining how my own gear works and fits.

He already chimed in, and I quoted him, immediately preceding your comment...

Oh my bad, I didn't realize there was a difference between the yellow things you put in your hands or the black things that the lines are attached to, I also didn't realize this was basejumper.com, I also didn't know you were and expert wingsuit fitter for every manufacturer. The faggotry on here is amazing sometimes...

Yep, that right there. Spontaneous pneumos are a bit of a mystery, and calculating odds of another are impossible, other than "high," which means, "more likely than a random person."

So in leaglease, that means there is any detectable amount of alcohol in the person's system. 0.08 is just a level that was decided on for the operation of motor vehicles, but any alcohol will cause some form of impairment. Even if the impairment is irrelevant and undetectable. You can be sure that will be argued if alcohol is found in a jumper's system, and then your fate is in the hands of the judicial system. As for alcohol's neurological effect "impairment" if you will, in the short term, it is mostly due to interfering with neural synapses. With chronic use, or if you are really intoxicated, it will affect cellular metabolism in a significant way. The arguments over the mechanism in the preceding posts are grossly oversimplified down to the point of being rather irrelevant and inaccurate. Really simple explanation http://www.ehow.com/info_8017604_effects-alcohol-oxygen-absorption.html Less simple explanation http://themedicalbiochemistrypage.org/ethanol-metabolism.php

Yeah, SQ's small suits seem to fly a size big. I flew the original Swift with about 100 jumps on bigger suits (SBird, XBird, Havok) and it still took me half the jump to get comfortable with the slidieness and sensitivity in the tail. The Funk felt a little fish tailie too. But good suits otherwise. I think where SQ shines is on the bigger stuff. Love my C2. For what it is worth, I've jumped 7 different suits (more than a few times) from all the big manufacturers, and never had toggle/riser reaching issues. But they fit folks different, and people have had other experiences.

Interesting, could be. Low altitude and being over a big ol lake/retention pond both support it.

Ahh makes sense, yeah I'm completely unfamiliar with VHS and DVD media, only ever worked with digital. So far I haven't had any issued editing MP4,or MOV directly (Haven't tried AVI). But if the quality is justified, I just convert to ProRes first, put it in DaVinci, then export as H.264. I even used it to edit some iPhone video for a school project with no issues. Idk if I would call it POS (and I use the free version so price isn't an issue), its made for a specific market that uses high end files on dedicated editing machines. DV12 is kinda a new concept as an editor + coloring, so they are expanding it's usefulness, growing pains included. It also doesn't support Sony RAW (ARW) so if you want to edit images then you have to convert to DNG first.

Makes sense, I've only ever had magnetic covers on gear (minus student rigs) so was unaware of fit problems.

Those are all pretty much the basics, good fit on your body, good fit on the main and reserve, completely concealed bridle, and a tuck tab on your hackey. As far as maintenance, if your BOC is getting loose, have it replaced. You want everything snug and tight. You may also consider soft emergency handles if you don't have them already. Less snaggy and slightly more difficult to pull because you are removing velcro on fabric from velcro on fabric, so there is more flex, with a metal handle you are just pulling a hard object between two pieces of velcro. Not noticeable in an emergency situation. And could vary from rig to rig, just talking about my personal experience. If your handle velcro is getting old, get some new stuff put in. **edit, also I hear (mostly from the manufacturers) but do not really understand why, so take it with a grain of salt. Apparently magnetic riser covers are significantly better than tuck tab ones**

If I'm not mistaken, a "strong thermal" would be in the 500 feet per minute range (of course they do get much stronger), which translates to about 5 or 6 mph. They also tend to be rather small, you would blow through a big one in a couple seconds. I would be surprised if that is what you are seeing. Maybe you just had a really good run, a couple data points isn't really a good trend to make a determination. If it is a huge difference, it could be GPS error. They aren't as accurate or as consistent as we'd like to think, not saying they aren't really good; but I've seen a car GPS climb to over 100mph for a few min then back down while cruising at 70 on the interstate the whole time. There are also some technical limitations I won't go into because I don't understand them well enough to repeat them accurately.

If you want me to put together a little short demo just let me know, I can record my screen and show you how I do it. Cutting and splicing clips is super easy, coloring and using some of the more advanced stuff is a little trickier (and I'm no pro). Just tell me what you want to do and I'll mimic it on some random skydiving vid(s). But check out the minimum Resolve system requirements first to make sure your machine can handle it. Your graphics card needs 1GB RAM, minimum, and your CPU 8GB minimum.

+1 for DaVinci Resolve 12 I run it on a Mac but is available for Windows. The 12 version is the first "all-in-one" editor of the Resolve lineage. It use to be mainly coloring software. A little technical but if you watch a few online intro tutorials then it becomes pretty logical. The only caveat is it runs primary on your graphics card, not just your processor. So if you don't have a pretty powerful machine, it might get overloaded. I played around with it and found that it is really easy to use after you make a couple edits. I tried coloring on my own but found out "auto-color" always does a better job than I do (just for making it "look nice," not trying to achieve a specific visual aesthetic). The light version is free, the pro version is like $900. The only real limit on the light version is you can't work with full 4k video. But it has no adds, no BS, and doesn't ask you to upgrade all the time. One of the only "technical" things I had to learn was what a "wrapper/container" and a "codec" was, and the difference between the two. But there are tutorials that explain the difference. Comes into play when you want to save the file. Basically that H.264 is what you want to save as the final format for MP4 players like QuickTime, VLC, and Windows Media Player. Just a quick note, related to wrappers and codecs. Not technically correct but gives you the general idea. Basically MP4 is highly compressed, each frame relies on the previous frame for a lot of its information. In something that is less compressed, like ProRes, the frames are all independent, so the each frame has all it's own info, thus the files are HUGE. Great for editing, not so good for sharing or playback. So editing in ProRes (or something similar) gives great quality, and then you save the final product in H.264 (aka MP4). If you try and edit from MP4 you get mediocre results. It is kinda like the difference between shooting stills in jpeg(compressed) or RAW(not compressed). If you aren't going to edit, then jpeg is fine, but RAW contains MUCH more information, so you can edit them considerably without loss of quality. That is basically what I had to learn.

Don't get caught up with 7-cell vs. 9-cell. The relationship is somewhat arbitrary and only exists because manufacturers know that consumers expect a 7-cell to be a certain way and expect a 9-cell to be another way, so thats how they generally build them. The Velocity after all is a 7-cell canopy, though a heavily modified one. Speed is your friend, it gives you more control but also requires more skill to appropriately handle. If you only ever fly big-dumb-happy wings, you will deprive yourself of some very important canopy piloting skills. If you want a brisk opening and a flat glide to give you more options for landing, then you should consider the PD Pulse, Fluid Prime, or Aerodyne Pilot. All open fairly quickly and are very forgiving, all have a flat glide, all flare pretty well, and all are 9-cells. The Prime(option) and Pulse(standard) also come in low bulk materials for smaller pack volumes making them comparable to 7-cells of the same size. If you are looking for a good WS canopy, all 3 are fantastic. If you are looking for something BASE-esque (or are just skydiving so you can BASE jump), just free pack a BASE canopy in your rig (i.e. no D-Bag). The Epicene fixes a problem that doesn't exist and caters to an uninformed market. I believe the Pilot 7 is in the same ball park. Full disclosure: I've put over 100 jumps on the Pulse, Prime, and Pilot each and loved them all, but am partial to the Prime. I have also made several jumps on free packed BASE canopies in skydiving containers and it works just fine, but as a new jumper people might give you a lot of static for doing it, and to be honest is probably a little bit above your skill set for the time being. I have only put a few jumps on an Epicene and never jumped a Pilot 7.

I agree with the technical assessment but just wanted to comment on the last little bit. Reinventing the wheel as it were is necessary for any technological advancement. The wheel has in fact been reinvented many times, the wheel and the tire that is. From stone to wood and steel to aluminum alloys, non-pneumatic to pneumatic, to non-pneumatic again, to tracks etc. Subtle changes that alter how it can be used, effectiveness, and efficiency. Innovation is important, and sometimes requires challenging the status quo. In that respect, I applaud the OP's effort, flawed as it is. The question he is trying to answer is also a somewhat important one for the more nuanced aspects of wingsuit flight. GPS speed is irrelevant when you are talking about aerodynamics because the GPS has no concept of air speed over a wing, which is the determinant factor of aerodynamic performance and handling. Everything from gyro-copters and sail planes to commercial airliners and super sonic jets, rely on "indicated airspeed" to define their performance envelopes. IAS tells you flight characteristics, GPS just tells you speed related to an arbitrary fixed position. You can land some small airplanes backwards in a strong enough head wind, that is a function of IAS, not speed over the ground. GPS doesn't even give you true air speed (which is a speed-over-ground equivalent). If you maintain a constant GPS speed throughout a jump you are in effect changing your air speed continuously to accommodate changes in pressure at differing altitude (even with zero wind). i.e. If you register 100kph GPS speed at 10,000ft and 100kph GPS speed at 3,000ft; then you would actually be experiencing a higher "indicated airspeed" at 3,000ft, and therefore different flight characteristics. (the air at 3,000ft is denser, so there are more molecules traveling around the wing, and therefore more lift and more drag). But yes, GPS is "good enough" for the vast majority of wingsuiters and for competitions when everyone is jumping under the same conditions. ** To give a real world example, I've exited at 13k ft into a 70mph headwind in a small wingsuit and my ground speed was virtually zero, a GPS would assume I wasn't moving (IAS or TAS would tell me how fast the air around me was moving), turning 180 degrees, my ground speed (aka GPS speed) would have been my airspeed + the 70mph wind, making it appear as though I was traveling through the column of air much faster than I actually was while IAS and TAS would remain the same (at the same altitude).**

Wow, you guys are so pathetically retarded you would ease your own suffering, and everyone else's by putting a bullet in your heads. I gleefully await the day when all of you ass backward old retards are 6 feet under and we can start cleaning up the mess you've made.

So one of the greatest failings in the scientific community is the lack of disseminating information in a way that is comprehensible to the general public and one of the greatest failings of the educational system is not ensuring the general public can understand scientific information. There are a great deal of variables that go into assessing information and understanding how it represents the "real world." Just as a seasoned auto mechanic may be able to interpret how to fix a problem with a car not explicitly stated in the manual, so those heavily involved in research are better able to understand the data that is presented versus those who just read secondary or tertiary literature on the internet. If you don't have a very strong understanding of statistics (at the university level) and very good understanding of biology (at the university level) and you haven't been heavily involved in scientific research (at the university level) and read literally hundreds of primary literature papers, you would do yourself and everyone else a favor by keeping your damn mouth shut, other than to ask questions of course :) That said, there is overwhelming evidence that human activity has caused an unprecedented increase in CO2 in the atmosphere. CO2 does two really nasty things, it acidifies water (the same reason when you hold your breath you feel the need to breath, thats your blood becoming acidic that is causing that feeling, not a lack of O2) and of course it retains heat. Both of these things have a sever impact on the global climate, but the global climate is complex and also subject to irregular and regular variations as well as local variations, that is why "global climate change" is now favored more than "global warming." Some areas will experience increases in temp, others reductions, some areas will experience more rain fall, others less. We simply do not have the tools or resources to predict the changes over every square mile of Earth. This is accepted and supported by the overwhelming majority of scientific bodies in the entire world. Now there is something you old folks seem to have a hard time with, there is no singular authority, there never has been, you were just lied to your whole lives and accepted it. No one study, or one scientist matters, the scientific method relies on consensus. Citing singular examples and anecdotes is the stuff of high schoolers and lay wannabe intellectuals. The consensus on this issue is in the 90+% realm of certainty that human activity has caused extreme CO2 emissions and that will indeed have severe consequences on the global climate, therefore every living thing. Some will flourish, others will go extinct. If you think that you have any reason to believe the contrary, I am here to tell you that you are a glaring retard not fit to have any sort of intelligent discussion and are trying to play so far outside of your own league that it isn't even the same sport. Backyard wiffle ball vs. MLB. And for those of you that accept the scientific consensus, good for you, you know how to recognize some fundamental aspects of cumulative effect. But unless you have met all the criteria I mentioned before, you also have no idea what you are talking about and aside from saying "I'm gonna go with what the researches said as a whole," are grossly unqualified to delve any deeper. Your law degree, MBA, psych degree, god forbid art degree or no degree at all, means nothing, your 50 years of successful business means nothing, your 80 years of life means nothing, everything you've ever read or heard that was not published in a peer reviewed scientific journal (the majority of which you have to pay for or have an affiliation with a university to even read (another failing of the scientific community)) means nothing. Know your place as the glorious and unfortunate majority of people who are totally reliant on someone else to tell you what is going on in the world or inside your own bodies. Your ignorance and confidence in it, is a plague. Isaac Asimov said it well, and was qualified to do so having earned a PhD in biochemistry. “Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”

It's called a passive gimbal (as opposed to the active/powered kind). DIY or some fancier machined stuff out there. Wood PVC Fancy 3D Printed Just stick some fins on it like a wind direction arrow and voila. (I've actually seen one of these made from carbon fiber and jumped, there was just no point really other than "how neat is that?") You could probably find a good swivel to do the job too and be really small.

So for the average jumper this doesn't matter, but for a competitive person sure, and they will want it to be very accurate. So in the interest of accuracy and consistency, why not just put a gimbaled pitot tube on a foot long chest or helmet mount? Then all the internal pressurization speculation is irrelevant.

I'm gonna have to agree with the conservatives on the semantics thing. There is no language authority and attempting to invoke one or posit English ought to be a certain way is in fact an elitist and unnecessary assertion. The purpose of teaching English in schools and having a basic model of its use is to facilitate communication, not impose obsolete rules. Once it leaves the school, it is the property of those who use it. Vernacular is by its very nature, correct. You should read this

The bit in question is only on the adapter to helmet side, so if you wanted, you could just order an adapter and try it out. Worst case scenario, you are out $30, but you could probably sell it someone and get almost all of that back. The EVO is primarily designed so you can change the pointing angle of the camera if I'm not mistaken, e.g. belly vs. tandem vs. freefly etc. If the curve of the helmet is significantly different, I don't think it will work either.

Yeah, in many industries I would agree that there is a certain degree of seniority that conveys a level of understanding that cannot be attained elsewhere. Not so much in skydiving, while there are exceptions to the rule of course and lots of meaningful experience from a small number of old timers who are heavily involved with industry R&D, I find in general the older a jumper, the more ass backwards their thinking is. I also find in life as a whole, the more vehemently someone defends a position, the less validity they have for doing so. The business practices I referred to were not only disclosure but (until recently) a maintenance and arbitrarily short retirement schedule that made Cypress literally twice as expensive as a Vigil over the units' lives (planned obsolescence). I admit, I'm a bit of an idealist, I look down on vanity pricing and planned obsolesce; I believe in offering a quality product at a reasonable price, especially when it comes down to a safety device. But if you're into unfettered capitalism that exploits people's naivety, then go for it I suppose (most of the skydiving industry is anyway).

What questions? About carbon emissions and the chemistry of how it interacts with the environment. There seems to be a great deal of lack of understanding as well as a complete absence of reputable sources.

Ehhh, I'll take the "Religion doesn't kill people, people kill people approach." Christians were burning people and flaying them alive in the not too distant past for blasphemy and witchcraft (same book btw). More about the user than the product really, all religion is equally dangerous and without logic.